Asleep at the switch

While I have many quibbles with the media, the fact is that the press can provide a wonderful public service. How many government or corporate abuses have gone unchecked until exposed to the light of public ridicule or scorn? Accused, non-convicted, detainees in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would still probably be suffering from unconscionable torture from Our Heroes if not for journalists and the guts of some editors to run the stories.

The latest example of why Thomas Jefferson said "If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without a free press or a free press without a government, I would prefer the latter" comes not surprisingly from Washington.

Earlier, Congress had passed a huge spending bill which financed most of the domestic side of government. As CNN noted, a previously unnoticed provision would have let leading members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees sign letters authorizing people to enter Internal Revenue Service facilities and see tax returns there. Republicans have said the provision was intended to give Appropriations Committee members better access to IRS offices.

The intent was ostensibly to better monitor how the IRS does its job but its potential for abuse is rather obvious.

Yet once public scrutiny was shined on this provision, the House reversed itself 381-0.

Unanimously.

Odd since even if most legislators didn't read what they were voting on, you figure at least one of them would've had to insert the objectionable provision.

Conveniently, a 'Congressional staffer' was blamed.

Democrats used the fiasco to criticize the process by which the budget is passed. The budget was completed over several days during which aides had little sleep and lawmakers had only a few hours to peruse it before voting. Democrats said the House should follow its own rules and give lawmakers at least three days to study bills before voting on them.

"The only people who don't know how this happened are members of Congress," reassured Rep. Charles Rangel of New York

A similiar thing happened here in New York, one of the few states where the governing process is more opaque than in Washington. A clause in the budget, which rank and file legislators are never given time to look at despite state constitutional provisions to the contrary, changed the way revenues from traffic fines were disbursed: they were taken away from the counties and given to the state... even though the counties are the ones who shoulder the expense of trying the accused. Once the counties realized this and protested vigorously to their representatives, the lawmakers seemed aghast at what they'd done and quickly tried to void the provisions.